For the longest time, I had “See a space shuttle flight” on my TODO list. There is only one more to go and unfortunately, I have not hit it big with a hot web app (90s’), nor a spectacular mobile app (00’s). Thus, there is no spare cash to flit me back and forth to Florida to catch an ever delayed launch (got to keep the day job). So, I’ll have to revise this particular TODO.

Hopefully, with the onset of some really exciting happenings in the commercial space flight arena, I may still get that opportunity to feel the rumble of thousands of pounds of thrust in my bones. SpaceX is leasing out Pad #40 and with the coming the Falcon 9 Heavy, I may get the opp to see a new Lunar or Martian mission push up and out of the gravity well.

And if I do eventually hit it big with the next goldrush in technology (nano?), maybe I’ll be able to afford to not only watch, but participate. Assuming that Mrs. Calrissian will allow me to see the dark side of the moon.

“Doc” Taylor does a great job of wrapping up this series. I really enjoyed the mechas and especially the battle scenes. I think I’ll explore some of his other series as well. Visit the author’s website.

While doing research for a new GeekDad article, I stumbled across an article on SciFi Scoop (my new favorite site) about an exciting straight to DVD movie (coming in 2010). War of the Worlds: Goliath takes the H.G. Wells story of Martian invasion and follows through with the Martians returning after a 15 year hiatus. Evidently, they’ve overcome their microbe issue and are ready to try & take Earth once again. But this time, we are ready! Steampunk mechas y’all!

A week or so ago, I blogged about the MDRS. This week, I received an email from the Mars Society and they are looking for volunteers for another analog station. Flashline Mars Artic Research Station (FMARS) is located at Devon Island in the Nunavut Territory of Canada. The 2009 research season will run from the beginning to the end of July 2009. All interested humans can apply for a position on the team. Applications, including resume, character references, a brief letter explaining why you wish to participate, and a summary of any proposed research should be sent no later than March 31, 2009 to:

Volunteers
Mars Society
11111 W. 8th Ave. Unit A
Lakewood, Co 80215

I was in the midst of typing up my application and explanation letter when Mrs. Calrissian looked over my shoulder. Guess I’m not going now…

The Mars Society runs an analog station in the Utah desert, Mars Desert Research Station. The location has terrain similar to what may be expected on Mars, so it gives researchers a place to experiment with different exploration techniques, crew schedules and tasks, as well as studying psychological conditions (can’t have people going postal 100 million miles from home). The crew’s usually do a two to four week stint at the station.

I am on the Mars Society‘s mailing list and this morning I received a note about the wrap up of Crew 75. After a few click-throughs I ended up on the crew’s YouTube page. Most everyone has seen the MTV show Cribs. Well, it looks like some of the producers have moved off planet. 🙂

I think Miss Janine did a great job as tour guide. It’s good to see a little humor being injected into the science world every now and then…

P.S.

MDRS will play host to this year’s University Rover Challenge. Ahhh…what I wouldn’t give to be a young pup back in the university world again…

MER Opportunity's waypoints around Victoria Crater

Wow!

That was about all I could say after reading the online buzz about the new Mars mode in Google Earth 5.0. I couldn’t wait to get home from the day job and get my hands on the update myself.

For you Google Earth users, you can now visit, fly over, zoom in, and explore our red planetary neighbor in all of its glory! The image and telemetry data was provided by the many exploration initiatives NASA and ESA have going on right now and in the past, including MRO, MER, MGS, and Mars Express.

I’m still exploring and playing with the new interface, so here is a write up to a more extensive overview. At the top is my first screenshot of where the MER Opportunity spent much of its time recently. At the end of this post are more of my screenshots from the new GE interface.

Back in 2006, NASA and Google agreed to partner with each other in helping to disseminate planetary data via the Space Act Agreement. This new feature built into GE (and a damn BIG feature it is!) is just the first in what this new partnership dares to bring to planetary scientist wannabes like myself. I can’t wait until more juicy chunks of data are made so readily available to the masses.

If you have not had the opportunity to use Google Earth at all, you now have one more reason to hit the download site and get it for yourself. Go NASA and go The Googles!

I read through a pretty good presentation today about why we MUST go to the Moon (via Popurls via Reddit). While I agree with the premise of the deck (we must go because exploration = advancement of science), I’m not sure if the Moon should be our next destination. BA discussed this a week or so back on his blog. I am a member of the Planetary Society and I fall in line with their plan:

To me this is logical, progressive, and daring. I believe that an agenda like this would keep the public excited and tuned in as we attempt to push further and further beyond our home planet. Exactly like something that Shackleton (read the Moon presentation above) would do.